Remote shutter module uses LCD screen for setup

Here’s a full-featured remote shutter project which [Pixel-K] just finished. It seems that he’s interested in taking time-lapse images of the cosmos. Since astrophotography happens outside at night, this presented some special design considerations. He wanted something that he could configure in the dark without zapping his night-vision too much. He also wanted it to be easily configured with a pair of gloves on.

The project enclosure is a 4x AA battery box. He removed the partitions between each cell, leaving plenty of room for the guts. Inside you’ll find a lithium battery and a micro-USB recharger board. It powers the Arduino mini pro which drives the 1.8″ LCD screen and actuates the optoisolator which is responsible for triggering the camera. On the right you can see the clear knob of the clickable rotary encoder. All of the user settings are chosen and selected using just this one knob.

He’s already tried it out on a 6-hour shoot and had no battery life problems or other issues.

There’s a lot to be said for buying in pre assembled modules when you have a clear idea of what you want to achieve. Those alone would shave a good two or three hours off the build time before you factor in the Arduino libraries speeding up software dev. Less project hours == better chance of finishing it.

I have found though that the Arduino libraries, especially 1.0 IDE libraries tend to be.. shall we say… lacking quite a bit in quality at times compared to commercial libraries.

I have had some take up 75% of PROGMEM with a single font. And no, this wasn’t documented anywhere. Stuff like that combined with the sudden and dramatic shift to the 1.0 IDE is holding the Arduino platform back.